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Olgerta Asko

Researcher - Neural Systems

Email olgerta.asko@psykologi.uio.no

Mobile phone +4748660573

Available hours 9:00 - 15:00

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Visiting address Sognsvannsveien 9 Domus Medica 0372 Oslo

Postal address Postboks 1105 Blindern 0317 Oslo

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Academic interests

Auditory and Visual Perception
Predictive Processing
EEG and intracranial EEG
Brain Lesions
Prefrontal Cortex
Open Science
FAIR neuroscience data management and sharing
Legal, ethical and practical considerations for sharing sensitive neuroscience data

Current academic activity

One of the major challenges in neuroscience is integrating large, heterogeneous datasets collected across different methods, scales, populations, and clinical contexts in order to better understand the nervous system in health and disease.

My current work focuses on open science, data sharing, and research infrastructures for sensitive human neuroscience data. I am particularly interested in how EEG and intracranial EEG data from human studies in Norway can be made more findable, interpretable, and reusable, while being handled responsibly and securely. This work includes metadata curation, data harmonization, sensitive data governance, and FAIR data practices within the broader EBRAINS framework.

Background

Education

2026 - Doctor in Philosophy, University of Oslo. Doctoral Thesis: Predictive Processing in Human Prefrontal Cortex: Causal Contributions of Orbitofrontal and Lateral Prefrontal Subregions

An interview about my PhD research

2016 - Master in Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Oslo. Master Thesis: Can Reward-based Learning Induce Long-lasting Changes in Spatial Priority? A Concurrent EEG and Pupillometry Study

2013 - Bachelor in Psychology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Bachelor Thesis: Working memory in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea and healthy controls

Positions held

Tags: cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, open science, sensitive neuroscience data, scalp and intracranial EEG, lesion studies

Asko, Olgerta; Volehaugen, Vegard Akselsson; Llorens, Anaïs; Funderud, Ingrid; Leske, Sabine Liliana & Ivanovic, Jugoslav [Show all 13 contributors for this article] (2025). Predictive encoding of auditory sequences in the human prefrontal cortex. bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology. doi: 10.1101/2025.08.22.671264. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Abstract Humans extract regularities from the environment to form expectations that guide perception and optimize behavior. Although the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is central to this process, the relative contributions of orbitofrontal (OFC) and lateral PFC (LPFC) remain unclear. Here, we show that the brain tracks sound regularities in an auditory deviance detection task to predict when a target deviant will occur. Intracranial EEG in epilepsy patients reveals prefrontal engagement, with earlier expectancy-related modulation in OFC and later modulation in LPFC. Connectivity analyses indicate bidirectional and asymmetrical expectancy-related information exchange between the two areas, with a first lead by OFC, consistent with its role in initiating predictive encoding. Converging causal evidence shows that OFC lesions abolish sensitivity to expectancy, whereas LPFC lesions yield only modest effects not significantly different from controls. Together, these results provide electrophysiological and causal evidence for distinct, temporally organized contributions of prefrontal subregions to predictive processing. Significance Statement The human brain builds probabilistic associations capturing the dynamic environmental structure in a predictive manner. The ability to encode and deploy predictive information to anticipate future events relies on the prefrontal cortex (PFC). However, the specific roles of PFC subregions in this process remain unclear. Here, we provide converging electrophysiological and causal lesion evidence on the distinct involvement of the orbital and lateral PFC in generating anticipatory neural signals based on probabilistic auditory structure.
Asko, Olgerta; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Foldal, Maja Dyhre; Anais, Llorens & Funderud, Ingrid [Show all 10 contributors for this article] (2024). Altered hierarchical auditory predictive processing after lesions to the orbitofrontal cortex. eLIFE. 13. doi: 10.7554/eLife.86386. Full text in Research Archive

View all works in NVA

Pileberg, Silje & Asko, Olgerta (2026). Forsker: Vær glad for livets overraskelser. [Internet]. Forskning.no. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
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Asko, Olgerta; Volehaugen, Vegard Akselsson; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Funderud, Ingrid; Llorens, Anaïs & Ivanovic, Jugoslav [Show all 12 contributors for this article] (2024). Predictive encoding of deviant tone sequences in the human prefrontal cortex. Full text in Research Archive
Asko, Olgerta; Volehaugen, Vegard Akselsson; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Funderud, Ingrid; Anais, Llorens & Ivanovic, Jugoslav [Show all 12 contributors for this article] (2024). Predictive encoding of deviant tone sequences in the human prefrontal cortex. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
The ability to use predictive information to guide perception and action relies heavily on the prefrontal cortex (PFC), yet the involvement of its subregions in predictive processes remains unclear. Recent perspectives propose that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) generates predictions about perceptual events, actions, and their outcomes while the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) is involved in prospective functions, which support predictive processes, such as selective attention, working memory, response preparation or inhibition. To further delineate the roles of these PFC areas in predictive processing, we investigated whether lesions would impair the ability to build predictions of future events and detect deviations from expected regularities. We used an auditory deviance detection task, in which the structural regularities of played tones were controlled at two hierarchical levels by rules defined at a local (i.e., between tones within sequences) and global (i.e., between sequences) level. We have recently shown that OFC lesions affect detecting prediction violations at two hierarchical levels of rule abstraction, i.e., altered MMN and P3a to local and simultaneous local + global prediction violations (https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.86386). Now, we focus on the task's predictive aspect and present the latest results showing the involvement of PFC subregions in anticipation of deviances informed by implicit predictive information. Behavioral data shows that deviance expectancy induced faster deviance detection in healthy adults (n=22), suggesting that participants track a state space representation of the task and anticipate upcoming deviant sequences. The analysis of EEG data from patients with focal lesions to the OFC (n = 12) or LPFC (n = 10), and SEEG from the same areas in patients with epilepsy (n = 7), revealed interesting differences. Healthy adults (n = 15) showed modulations of the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) – a marker of anticipatory activity - tracking the expectancy of deviant tone sequences. However, patients with OFC lesions lacked CNV sensitivity to the predictive context, while patients with LPFC lesions showed moderate sensitivity compared to healthy adults. These results were further supported by intracranial recordings, which revealed expectancy modulation of the high-frequency broadband signal from electrodes in OFC and LPFC, with an earlier latency of activity modulation for the OFC and a later one for the LPFC. Altogether, the complementary approach from behavioral, intracerebral EEG, scalp EEG, and causal lesion data provides compelling evidence for the distinct engagement of the two prefrontal areas in predicting future events and signaling deviations.
Asko, Olgerta; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Meling, Torstein Ragnar; Knight, Robert T. & Endestad, Tor [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2023). The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) has a critical role in the generation of high-level expectations. Full text in Research Archive
Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Asko, Olgerta; Volehaugen, Vegard; Foldal, Maja Dyhre; Solli, Sandra & Leske, Sabine Liliana [Show all 9 contributors for this article] (2023). Auditory perception, memory, and predictions. Full text in Research Archive
Asko, Olgerta; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Meling, Torstein Ragnar; Knight, Robert T. & Endestad, Tor [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2023). Orbitofrontal lesion impacts formation of auditory expectations. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Current findings of orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) function suggest that this region might have a role in the generation of prediction error signals associated with top-down expectation of upcoming stimuli. We investigated the impact of lesions to the OFC on the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV), an electrophysiological marker of cognitive expectation and time perception. Twelve OFC patients and fifteen healthy controls performed an auditory local-global paradigm while brain electrical activity was recorded. The structural regularities of the tones were controlled at two hierarchical levels by rules defined at a local (i.e., between tones within sequences) level with a short timescale and at a global (i.e., between sequences) level with a longer timescale. At the global level, deviant tone sequences were interspersed among standard tone sequences in a pseudorandom order, rendering some deviant sequences more anticipated than others. We found that healthy controls exhibited CNV build-up before the occurrence of deviant sequences. The CNV drift rate was modulated by the expectancy of deviant sequences (i.e., the higher the expectancy, the higher the CNV drift rate), reflecting their ability to anticipate when a deviant tone sequence would occur. However, patients with OFC lesions did not show CNV drift modulations by the expectancy of the deviant tone sequences, indicating impaired anticipation of these upcoming events. These findings suggest involvement of the OFC in generating auditory expectations based on the contextual and temporal structure of the task.
Bonetti, Leonardo; Foldal, Maja Dyhre; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Asko, Olgerta; Volehaugen, Vegard Akselsson & Solli, Sandra [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2023). Auditory perception, memory, and predictions. Full text in Research Archive
Asko, Olgerta; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Foldal, Maja Dyhre; Llorens, Anaïs & Funderud, Ingrid [Show all 10 contributors for this article] (2022). Altered hierarchical auditory predictive processing after lesions to the orbitofrontal cortex. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
In this study, we tested the causal involvement of the OFC in noticing breaches of predictions (i.e., PEs) at different hierarchical levels of task structural complexity. With this aim, we examined the event-related potentials (ERPs) of patients with focal OFC lesions and healthy adults while performing an auditory local-global oddball paradigm. Altogether, we found that after OFC damage, low-level PEs (i.e., processing of stimuli that are unpredicted at the local level) and combined low- and high-level PEs (i.e., processing of stimuli that are unpredicted at both the local and global level) were impacted. However, the processing of standard tones was not affected. We conclude that the OFC may contribute to a top-down process that modulates the deviance detection system in the primary auditory cortices, and may be involved in connecting PEs at lower hierarchical areas with predictions at higher areas. The study sheds new light on the poorly explored deficits of hierarchical auditory prediction in patients with damaged OFC.
Stavrinou, Maria; Asko, Olgerta; Hagen, Thomas; Foldal, Maja Dyhre & Espeseth, Thomas (2017). The long term effects of reward on spatial priority maps studied with Electroencephalography and Pupillometry. Full text in Research Archive
Asko, Olgerta (2026). Predictive Processing in Human Prefrontal Cortex: Causal Contributions of Orbitofrontal and Lateral Prefrontal Subregions. University of Oslo (UiO). Full text in Research Archive Show summary
The human brain is not a passive receiver. It is a prediction engine that continuously integrates what has happened with what is happening to anticipate what comes next. This dissertation investigates how orbitofrontal (OFC) and lateral prefrontal (LPFC) subregions causally contribute to hierarchical predictive processing in the auditory domain, within a predictive coding framework. Combining focal lesions with EEG and iEEG, it shows that OFC damage weakens and delays neural responses to local and local+global rule violations and disrupts expectancy-related modulation of anticipatory (CNV) signals, whereas LPFC damage has more modest effects. Intracranial recordings confirm OFC involvement, with expectancy-dependent activity emerging earlier in OFC than LPFC and recurrent cross-talk initiated from OFC to LPFC. Moving beyond simple deviance-detection paradigms, the work targets the hierarchical and anticipatory nature of prediction and separates genuine prediction from repetition-based adaptation. Together, it highlights OFC as a key, previously underexplored region in human predictive processing.